Temic are streaming Ceiba in its entirety on the day it arrives, 2 October, through Season of Mist. It is the follow up to the 2023 debut Terror Management Theory, and it runs to eleven tracks.
The title is the ceiba tree, held sacred in Mayan culture as the link between earth, heaven and the underworld, and the record uses it for an album about loss in several forms, from the end of friendships to bereavement to losing a sense of self. Keyboardist Diego Tejeida says the subject arrived without being chosen: "Though we don't often talk about them with each other, loss is so universal that it will always be a natural part of our lives, like a tree."
How it sounds: Ashes opens heavy and then gives way to a brighter chorus, Casting Stone moves between djent, hard rock and electronics, and Broken strips almost everything out to deal with a codependent relationship ending. Tejeida is blunt about why that one is simple. "Prog can be too concerned with being clever, but Broken is just an honest song."
The album brings in bassist Miguel Pereira of Withem and Big City, alongside vocalist Fredrik Bergersen Klemp, guitarist Eric Gillette, Tejeida and drummer Simen Sandnes. It closes with the ten minute As Long As We Last. Chris Edrich mixed it and Pierrick Noel mastered it at Atelier Mastering. The band put the Ashes video together on a cruise ship, as we reported in August.